If you had a brother, would he like cheese?

My mom pointed out that Elliot Sober did not, in fact, write the “If you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?” joke. She says she heard it as a child from my great-grandfather. And it’s older than that: one version of the joke appears in the 1858 comedy Our American Cousin (most famous nowadays as the last play Abraham Lincoln ever saw.) The comic engine of Our American Cousin is the upper-class twit Lord Dundreary, who brought the house down with business of this nature:

Dun What do they keep in pigeon houses? Oh! pigeons, to be sure;
they couldn’t keep donkeys up there, could they? That’s the dairy,
I suppothe?

Geo Yes, my lord.

Dun What do they keep in dairies?

Geo Eggs, milk, butter and cheese.

Dun What’s the name of that animal with a head on it? No,
I don’t mean that, all animals have heads. I mean those animals
with something growing out of their heads.

Geo A cow?

Dun A cow growing out of his head?

Geo No, no, horns.

Dun A cow! well, that accounts for the milk and butter;
but I don’t see the eggs; cows don’t give eggs; then there’s the cheese–
do you like cheese?

Geo No, my lord.

Dun Does your brother like cheese?

Geo I have no brother. I’m so delicate.

Dun She’s so delicate, she hasn’t got a brother. Well,
if you had a brother do you think he’d like cheese?

Human(itie)s, aliens, and autism: Ian Hacking and Elliot Sober at Fluno Center tomorrow

Humanities at Wisconsin are said to be underfunded and demoralized, but you’d never know it from the excellent “What is Human?” symposium the Center for Humanities is holding tomorrow at Fluno Center. At 1:45, Ian Hacking will speak on “Humans, aliens, and autism” — perhaps he’ll expand on some of the material in this 2006 essay from the LRB. Hacking’s two books on the development of probability theory, The Emergence of Probability and The Taming of Chance, are probably the best I’ve read on the history of mathematics; to stay bound to the theme of this post, he is one of the only people writing really humanely about mathematical practice. (The late Thomas Tymoczko was another.)

Speaking at 11:15 is our own Elliot Sober, who is that most powerful of creatures, a philosopher who knows Bayes’ Theorem. (See also: Adam Elga, K. Anthony Appiah.) Sober’s title is TBA, but he may well talk about (or, more likely, against) the “design argument” against Darwinism. (He’s definitely giving a talk on that subject at 7:30 this Thursday night, in 1315 Chemistry.) A very vulgar version of the design argument looks like this. The probability that intelligent life would arise, if there were no divine guidance, is nonzero but spectacularly small. The probability that intelligent life would arise, if a divine being created it, is 1. Now Bayes says you should think that divine origin of human life is very likely, even if it was very unlikely in your prior. Sober’s new book, Evidence and Evolution, takes on the design argument and its many more sophisticated variants, and more generally tries to work out what we mean by “evidence” about the origins of life. Bayes flies everywhere.

Sober is also credited with the following joke:

A boy is about to go on his first date, and is nervous about what to talk about. He asks his father for advice. The father replies: “My son, there are three subjects that always work. These are food, family, and philosophy.”

The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda fountain. Ice cream sodas in front of them, they stare at each other for a long time, as the boy’s nervousness builds. He remembers his father’s advice, and chooses the first topic. He asks the girl: “Do you like potato pancakes?” She says “No,” and the silence returns.

After a few more uncomfortable minutes, the boy thinks of his father’s suggestion and turns to the second item on the list. He asks, “Do you have a brother?” Again, the girl says “No” and there is silence once again.

The boy then plays his last card. He thinks of his father’s advice and asks the girl the following question: “If you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?”

(This philosophy joke, along with many others, appears here.)